We’re on our way now!

A big well-done to everyone for last night. It really did go as well as I had hoped.

Take My Hand was just a slick run through – nice minims tightly together after a couple of bars, and there was the best yet pp just before Alma’s “take it away cats”. Final chord was spot on.

Yes the Hedgehog sounded like it had 5 legs at one point, but you know, maybe that’s the way I should arrange the next version. Our various soloists in this did a grand job and kept it moving along. Our most ambitious piece.

Bananas was good. For a moment, I wondered whether some players had joined the Musicians Union and were not going to play after 9.15pm or something. Once we got going, it flowed well. I was very pleased to hear that our champion hornist sounds even better in the kirk.

I like Waterloo best of all, personally. The performance of it was as good as we have done – the soloists at the start were very good and perfectly together, the chords in the middle sounded like we all knew exactly what to expect, and the ending had fag-papers.

Only those who have been there (which includes us now), know how hard it is to wait nearly 2 hours and then pull out all the stops for a brief now-or-never 10-15 minutes. I’ll talk more on Tuesday.

In the meantime I have 2 more pieces ready to look at.

Roger

The Programme

OK. Here’s how it looks:

1) Take my Hand Precious Lord
2) The Hedgehog
3) Bananas (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ZYP_xWSbI)
4) Waterloo
Encore: Be still and know

We could put “Be still and know” in between Hegehog and Bananas.
Any comments about this, please let me know

Alison Balsom gig

Here are the details of the concert I mentioned:

http://www.scottishensemble.co.uk/40,806/forthcoming_concerts/summer_season_september_2011/346

If you’re interested let me know and we’ll see if we can organize a group booking.

The Hedgehog – sound file

Here’s the way The Hedgehog sounds from Sibelius.

http://www.perception.stir.ac.uk/zips/hedgehog.mp3

Three more aspects of tunes

This week I want to look at three more important aspects of the structure of tunes, and then we can start to put it all together. Here is a very effective, simple tune:

The first feature I want to draw attention to is the rhythm. This is one of those tunes that has a regular 6 beat rhythm all the way through made up of 4 crotchets followed by one minim (with only one departure, at the end). These 6 beat patterns are phrases. The minims are the most stable part of each phrase because they are the longest notes and they fall at the start of a bar for extra prominence. Look at the pattern of pitches made by the minims: this is like the skeleton of the tune.

The second feature of this tune is the way the minims are linked by the crotchets in between. Each phrase begins with a crotchet that is almost not there: mostly it is the same as the minim before and the crotchet after. Except for the last 2 (the B in bar 8 and the F in bar 10), these upbeat crotchets at the start of each phrase are just rhythm to keep the tune moving. Those last two upbeats break this pattern and this matters:
1) The B in bar 8 is the same as the minim before it, but it leads up to a C at the start of the next bar. This gives the C a highlighted prominence: it comes when we aren’t expecting it (we should be hearing another B here). By moving up unexpectedly, the tune here is showing a little bit of excitement. The C is already going to be prominent because it is the highest note in the tune and it’s the key note. So by getting it early, we are being tickled a bit.
2) The F in bar 10 is lower than the minim before it and leads downwards for the next note also. That has the effect of relaxing us.
Notice that in this, the two notes that are behaving unexpectedly are our old unstable friends a B and an F. The B is moving us upwards; the F is moving us downwards. These two steps, ujp from B and down from F, are the only two ways of making a semitone interval in this key.

The final feature of this tune concerns the remaining notes: the little clusters of 3 crotchets between the upbeat at the start of each phrase and the minim at the end. These come in two forms: a twiddle as in the first 2 cases; a ramp as in the second 2 cases. The whole pattern of the tune is then: twiddle, twiddle, ramp, ramp, twiddle, ramp. (The last ramp includes a minim half way through – which just slows the tune down a bit ready for it to end).

So, this very simple, pleasing tune has
a skeleton (and if you look at the skeleton you’ll see that it is a slow twiddle followed by a slow ramp);
it has phrases where the upbeat at the start usually is only rhythmic until it has one of our unstable pitches B or F;
it has a pattern of melodic twiddles and ramps.

Some background information about the tunes we are playing

Several of the tunes we are working on just now are arrangements of old folk songs. They are taken from the Greig-Duncan Folksong Collection, which was compiled by schoolmaster Gavin Greig from New Deer and Rev James Duncan from Alford between 1900 and 1920. They are songs that they heard in Aberdeenshire.

The Hedgehog has these words:

Three men went out a hunting,
But nothing could be found;
At last they came to a donkey
Just lying on the ground.
Fat do you think o’ that noo?
Only see at that noo;
Fat do you think o’ that noo?
Fal-al-de-doo a-day

A donkey yes a donkey,
But Scottie he says nay;
It’s your grandfather
And his locks are turning grey.
Fat do you think o’ that noo?

Scottie said it was a hedgehog;
The Englishman said nay;
Paddy said it was a pincushion
And the pins stuck in the wrong way.
Fat do you think o’ that noo?

A couple of observations. First, donkeys don’t say nay – its horses that do that – so we can figure out that this was written by a townie. Second, the last verse looks like it’s one of those jokes – there was an englishman, an irishman and a scotsman – only the punch line is rubbish.

The Plains of Waterloo is said to have been written by John Robertson, a bugler in the 92nd Highlanders. It celebrates a military victory of 18th June 1815. Does this make it Scotland’s version of the 1812 Overture?

The words are lengthy, but they begin like this:
On the 16th day of June brave boys in Flanders where we lay
Our bugles gave the alarming sound before the break of day…
which gives us a clue to how it should sound.

After lots of bloodshed and such like, the words end like this:
Then Caledon took up her drone and loud her chanter blew
Played Marshall Ney a new Strathspey to the time o Waterloo.
Before the tune was played half o’er the French had danced their fill…

There are a couple of observations to make here also. First the dates might seem confused. Technically the song should have said that the command to bugle was given on the 16th. Alas the players were in the pub. When they turned up, one had the wrong music and had to get his mum to bring the right sheet; another had one valve stuck; and the third couldn’t find his mouthpiece. So, it was the 18th before the bugles actually did the alarming sound.

Also note that it is interesting that being made to dance to a new strathspey played on bagpipes was the punishment inflicted on the French. Brutal times those days indeed; luckily the Geneva Convention outlaws all that sort of thing these days.

The Golden Glove has the longest words of the lot. It is a story about what befalls a farmer who stupidly takes a golden glove from a young man with an unusually smooth complexion. The young man turns out to be a cross-dressing young woman and the farmer is alas doomed to matrimony. Younger men in TB take note – an important lesson in life here. You can read all the words here : The Golden Glove

Report

Callander Brass Tuesday Band
Report 12th April 2011

History
The Training Band began a new phase of development at the end of January 2011 when it started Tuesday evening sessions. Sessions start at 6.45pm and end at 8.30pm with a brief break half way through. These have proved successful and sustainable.

At the first ever session, band members discussed they way they wanted to work. They wish to be known as Callander Brass Tuesday Band – TB for short. They see TB as both training players to feed into the Thursday Band and as an end in its own right: something for the community. There are currently 13 members: 12 players and someone else.

The young people in TB have led the way in making the sessions successful and are a very considerable asset. TB is very grateful to the experienced players who give up time to provide invaluable support.

Where we have reached
An evening session combines these elements in a sociable and friendly environment:
1) rigorous work on technique – note production, scales, Arban
2) teaching of basic music theory – the essence of diatonic tonality: consonance/dissonance, melodic contour, harmonic progression
3) repertoire building

Progress has been swift. All players are improving individually on tonguing, range and stamina. Together there has been a marked improvement in ensemble, dynamics and reading. Individual and collective confidence is growing: players are willing to play on their own in front of the others; the band is getting better at handling passing dissonant harmonies.

As a result of hard work from players, we will be ready to perform a 10-15 minute programme of new pieces (including a world premiere) for the May concert to showcase our work to date.

Looking ahead
In practical terms, we are working on responsiveness – listening to others whilst playing and watching the conductor. We have begun an interesting experiment in playing from memory to facilitate this. After an initial 6 week period of sight reading, we have settled for now into improving familiar pieces. We will return to sight reading in June.

In music theory, we will turn to explore rhythm in the near future.

For our repertoire, we have 2 fairly ambitious pieces we wish to get comfortable with. Members will be asked to suggest items for the repertoire over the summer. There is also interest in re-visiting some old pieces to see how they go.

We look forward to being joined by Primary School beginners. We have recruited one of their mothers who comes for a lesson at 6.30pm on Tuesdays (meaning that in due course TB should have its own 3 generation dynasty). We see this as something very positive and will be actively seeking more adult beginners after the summer. We are already talking through how best to manage this.